So for a few months before it starts up again, the silly season known as an election campaign is over. Of course I'm grateful that we as citizens have some say in who gets the "honor" of governing us. It's arguably better than a despotism in which the despots get to choose the governed and eliminate the rest. However, I still come away from every election shaking my head in sadness that so much energy, resources and gab were expended for so little.

Did your guy win this past Tuesday? Did your party emerge victorious? The answers to those questions are quite often not the same as the answer to this question: Will the country be any freer or more civil or more prosperous because of the election outcome?

It's a sad commentary that politics consumes so much of our lives these days, but it's the natural and inevitable outcome of having granted politics such a commanding role in the first place. How foolish it is to expect bigger government to ever produce better government, quieter government or kinder, gentler government!